Tuesday night. If the Spanish word for “Tuesday” is “martes,” should we combine Taco Tuesday and Margarita martes just to be on the safe side?

Well, eating five servings of beans to catch up on ye olde protein intake definitely seemed like a good idea last night. Not so much this morning – but hey, lesson learned, right?

To keep this latest lockdown project going, I made a quick run to Costco to stock up on frozen chicken breast. It was my first time there in over six months… Either it’s a lot more hectic these days than it had been in the past, or I’m no longer used to having so many people around me anymore. Might be both, to be honest.

Upside: I’ve acquired plenty of chicken, and will be able to keep munching on it for quite a while. Downside: I had no idea I’d have to eat so much (not just protein, but everything) to get to my caloric target. The 55%/25%/20% split between carbs/protein/fat is interesting in that you have to balance the ratio as well as the total calories. A fascinating game of multidimensional tetris, that. (That’s also how I ended up baking three lonely beets next to my perfectly measured 250g of chicken. Heh.) The upside, though, is that with all the exercising, I actually get sleepy around the traditional bedtime. I’m going to miss running on fumes and staying up late… Here is to better sleep, though.

At Costco, I parked next to a car with New York license plates. I wonder who that was, where they’re from, and how soon they intend to skedaddle back in that general direction.

I don’t often write about the US news, but this was noteworthy: a whistleblower nurse said an ICE detention center in Georgia performed involuntary hysterectomies (in other words, forced sterilization) on women in its custody. They described it “like an experimental concentration camp.” The gynecologist has been identified as Mahendra Amin. He himself is an immigrant, and a doctor with 43 years of experience, which adds just another layer to this horror. How long until even this is normalized? That was, without exaggeration, exactly what Nazis used to do to their prisoners. The only remaining step is gas chambers – and seeing how so many folks in the US have normalized the existence of concentration camps for children, I honestly wouldn’t bet against that. How many more crimes against humanity are taking place right now, without conscientious whistle blowers to report them? How many more are just around the corner?

Not for the first time, nor for the last – I’m so incredibly glad I left the US for Canada…

In covid news: two days ago, Michael Caputo (a top official at the Health and Human Services) had a public meltdown in a video he posted on his Facebook page. It was rather impressive, really: he allegedly ranted about an anti-Trump “resistance unit” in the CDC and accused scientists of “sedition.” He also described “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” If we live in a TV show, the writers are really mailing it in. All of this came after the media reported on Caputo’s attempts to interfere with the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. It’s been two days: Caputo has deactivated his Facebook account, issued something that’s supposed to be an apology (addressed to his boss, not to the CDC), and said he might take a leave of absence. I hope he gets the help he needs, but I’m also disturbed that someone like that has a government job. Then again, it’s possible everyone involved in sweeping the covid numbers under the rug is just like him…

In more positive news, there’s a promising report from the University of Pittsburgh: their scientists isolated an antibody component (10 times smaller than a regular antibody) that neutralizes the virus, and created a drug they’re calling Ab8. So far, it’s been successfully tested on mice and hamsters. (Reader, if you’re a mouse and/or hamster, I’m incredibly happy for you.) There’s no timeline for human testing yet, and this could well end up being another amazing cure that doesn’t really pan out, but hey – this is still good news. A lot of brainiacs all over the world are working on the same problem, and they’re making progress, and eventually they’ll win. We just have to stay patient…